Yanagi
Yanagi (柳, Yanagi), possibly Tatsuki (龍喜, Tatsuki) is a kunoichi of Konohagakure, and formerly a refugee from the Bloodline Purge of Kirigakure. She is also a member of Team Taiyo. Background Yanagi was found under a willow tree as a baby, by a warden of the Konoha Orphanage near the river, beside her dead brother- it is unknown as to what brought them there, but the warden had suspected that something bloody has certainly occured, judging by the wounds found on her brother's corpse. She was thus given the name, Yanagi, and was raised in the orphanage. Once she was old enough, she began training as a shinobi in the Academy. Her only connection to her family was the pair of dangling earrings with bluish green stones; she used to keep it hidden under layers of fabric and locked in her 'secret chest' and often only wearing it whenever she is feeling sad, in an attempt to feel closer to the family she never knew, before placing it back into the box for safe keeping. Personality In Part I, Yanagi is an incredibly demure and quiet, often too shy and insecure to speak up, let alone hold a conversation with anyone. As such, she is incredibly awkward, and has little to no social skills to speak of, causing her to sometimes divulge improper facts or even react in a way that does not conform to normal social cues. Thus, she finds it easier to simply follow instructions and carry on as it is, rather than to speak her mind, causing her to become incredibly non-confrontational and submissive- to the point where it seems that she has no ability to think for herself. After all, after the first few major hiccups and incidents, Yanagi has developed such a strong fear of offending others, and having others badmouthing her behind her back, that she completely stopped talking-only speaking when necessary, and preferring to use other methods to communicate if possible. As such, seeing other classmates who are social, and actually have friends, caused Yanagi to develop an inferiority complex; more than often not she is comparing herself against others. Initially, she was simply envious of the many friends her classmates, such as Ino, has, but slowly she began comparing their social status, abilities, appearances and such- it became an incredibly bad habit of hers, to immediately categorise someone else’s characteristics and compare herself against them. Due to this, she has not only became extremely insecure about herself, but also bitter and prone to bouts of jealousy, which made her attempts to make friends even more difficult. Due to her bad socialising skills, along with years upon years of repressed frustration and bitterness, in the events of Part II and Shippuden, Yanagi did a complete 180 ° change over the course of the timeskip, and became completely apathetic to the opinions and views of others; she freely explored her interests, behaved as she wanted to behave, and generally did her own thing without minding others. However, even then, due to her deep-set insecurity, she still couldn’t find it in herself to speak and continued to use either code, written messages, body language or even sign language to communicate with others. During this time, she became incredibly competitive, reckless, and excited to try out new things; her little self-discovery journey had led her to make friends out of certain people such as Sarutobi Asuma, Akimichi Choji and even the person she was most envious of throughout her childhood, Yamanaka Ino . She was incredibly wild then, and her confidence was thorough the roof- sometimes even bordering on arrogance- as she completely let go of all her childhood fears and threw social norms out of the window. She flirted, she drank, she smoked, she painted, went on 'restaurant-crawls', read all the books she could possibly find and adopted several cats at the same time; she was very energetic, and more driven by her emotions than her brain during this time. She also became easily irritable, impatient and childish- to the point of seeming almost obnoxious- as long as those around her aren't showing a too-negative reaction; it was during this time that she has managed to even invent several jutsus and nearly kill herself from sheer stupidity each time. However, inside, she is still a very pessimistic and negative individual, and certainly had her bouts of low moods and irritability, causing other to think of her as someone which very ''intense mood-swings and some even suspected her of being manic depressive due to this. '''After the War, '''eventually, she began to mellow out as she met more people, as she slowly matured; she became more reserved again, and her arrogance and pride mellowed out to become a sure and steadfast confidence which she carries with her, and she no longer threw herself headfirst into every little thing, causing herself to crash and burn at the end- and now knows how to conserve her strength. She also learnt to become more considerate of others, and trained herself to be able to read the atmosphere better; instead of reacting violently and harshly each time, she slowly began to understand other's viewpoint, and is now able to see through a discussion calmly instead of immediately getting angry and argue about it. Overall, her social skills has improved considerably, the longer she spent surrounded by friends, and as such, her moods became more stable, and she no longer had extreme and rapid mood-swings, although she ''is ''still prone to violent outbursts now and then when 'adulting' became too much for her. However, she still retains her bad habit of channeling all her negative emotions into overworking herself, making her quite the worrying workaholic. This had stemmed from her childhood habit, where the warden is usually too tired to deal with all the crying children, and Yanagi cried a ''lot, so she is usually put to do the chores until she calmed down- it became something of a coping mechanism for her even after all these years. She has became more confident in expressing herself, and expressing her kindness and concern without fearing that it is a sign of weakness. But most of all, after so many years, she has finally started to speak with her words again. Appearance Yanagi has always been the runt of the group; scawny, bony, and significantly shorter than her peers due to malnutrition. Thus, even after many years, she had retained the same washboard, overly skinny-bordering on unhealthy look that allowed her to pass as a boy even if she went around only in a pair of shorts and no bra. Yanagi has dark greyish blue hair- which is slightly curly, pale skin and hooded, downturned yellow eyes In Part I, Yanagi's hair is cut in an almost boyish hairstyle; her hair is very messy and is cut unevenly- suggesting that she might have did it herself, and her fringe is cut straight, stopping right above her eyes. She also keeps her side fringes longer than the rest of her hair, reaching her chin. As a genin, she wears a loose, black, turtleneck crop top with bishop sleeves and a slit down the middle, starting from the chest area. Her forehead protector is also tied around her left arm. There is also small embellishments across the shoulders, in a circle of small rectangles in yellow. Underneath, she wears a black, long-sleeved shirt. On the bottom, she has a short pale orange wrap-around skirt, which is secured by a burnt orange strip of cloth, tied in a bow around her waist. She also has a pair of black stirrup leggings-with her shuriken holster on her right leg-and wears blue sandals. In Part II, Yanagi has grew out her hair until it was hip-length, and has it tied in two long braids. She also has a pair of dangling earrings with greenish-blue stones attached, which were what she inherited from her dead brother. She has also gotten an tattoo spanning her entire back- from the base of her neck, over her shoulders, down to her elbows and all the way down to the juncture where her thigh and hips met- depicting an oni cutting down a hanya from the back of a great tiger, with chrysanthymums and peonies decorating her limbs, and two snakes coiling up her arm, barely hidden behind the flowers. Here, her clothing choices became more daring; she has switched out her long sleeved shirt with a tiny, black tube top with criss-crossing straps across her chest, and swapped out her long stirrup leggings with fishnet stockings and a pair of black shorts. Over it, she wears a large, oversized, dark green jacket with the Uzumaki spiral crest on her left shoulder, and the metal plate of her forehead protector on her right shoulder- the jacket which has numerous clasps and pockets to hold an array of weapons and equipment. She now has her shuriken holsters on both of her thighs, and has switched to the standard black sandals. During the Fourth Shinobi World War, Yanagi could be seen wearing the standard Konoha chunin uniform, this time with her hair twisted up into a bun. A few years later, there was once again a drastic change to Yanagi's wardrobe. But most notable of all, is that now she began wearing round glasses with thin rims in order to compensate for the deteriorating eyesight- of which was brought on by her bad habit of smoking and heavy drinking. She has also switched out her old earrings, with a pair of bright green tassels for earrings, as her old pair had been shattered during the war, and she now lets her hair down- which now reaches slightly below her hips. She now has more flexibility with her wardrobe, and while she more than often not goes around in an outfit heavily resembling her outfit from her genin days. Often, she could be seen wearing a cropped, long sleeved black shirt under a loose sweater, and either a pair of shorts or a skirt over black stirrup leggings, and the standard black sandals. However, it is noted that she prefers outfits which could show off her extensive tattoos. Abilities Since young, Yanagi always had a bright mind and boundless creativity- and she much preferred daydreaming and reading fiction over training her body. While it was detrimental for her physical conditioning, her childhood daydreams had became the fuel and motivation for her to excell at the art of genjutsu. Genjutsu Due to her lacklustre skill in taijutsu and ninjutsu, Yanagi put her entire focus on her genjutsu abilities; motivated by her rampant imagination, and innovative outlook on genjutsu, Yanagi is said to be a budding genjutsu specialist in the making. She is extremely skilled in detecting minute changes in her chakra flow, and slight differences in her surroundings, she is able to react instantly and break out of complex genjutsu without an issue. Her genjutsu mostly focus on the ludicrous, the fantastical and the morbid; colossal dragons and twisted demons that both smelled and look like rotten corpses, scenery filled with fumes and poison, with corpses strewn all over the place and shadows that lingers just at the corner of one's eyes; and all is mainly derived from one jutsu, the False Surrounding Technique. Though her 'creativity' may seen counterproductive- for she made it blatantly obvious that it is a genjutsu- but Yanagi's skill lies in layering dozens of layers of genjutsu over one another, and coiling it so deeply inside her opponent's chakra coils and brain that they would start to question reality despite the ridiculousness of it. When sparring, even Konoha's Genjutsu Mistress, Yuhi Kurenai has complimented her on her interesting take on genjutsu. Ninjutsu Yanagi's skill in ninjutsu mostly lie in her ability to combine and carry out multiple jutsus successively with little to no handseals, and even dole out several cooperation ninjutsu by herself, by combining her nature transformations, as well as tying together various genjutsu techniques together. Although Yanagi's repertoire of ninjutsu could be considered rather limited due to her unremarkable memory, she is capable of using them to great affect and even has several genjutsu techniques- which are certainly quite deadly- which she has created herself. Nature Transformation Possessing the Lightning Release as well as the Water Release was a wonderful coincidence for Yanagi, as she is able to easily combine the two together to form combination ninjutsu. More than often not, she prefers a simple Water Prison Technique with a Lightning Release: Lightning Rod, or maybe even layering a Water Whip with a Electromagnetic Murder for a bit of an extra pizzazz. Bukijutsu Yanagi is regularly seen whipping her meteor hammer around, although it is merely a complimentary weapon in order to grant her more reach; she usually charges her weapon with lightning chakra, and due to the fact that her skill with her weapon isn't exactly stunning, she usually backs it up with her genjutsu ability. Intelligence Yanagi's usual approach to combat is a heavy reliance on genjutsu- layering genjutsu to subtly confuse the opponent's senses, to hide objects from view, to distract the opponent and temporarily immobilise them through her more audacious genjutsu- and misdirection, mainly by multitasking; engaging her opponents in a battle in taijutsu while subtly weaving illusions around them and distracting them from the ninjutsu she is employing. However, her limited jutsu repertoire and heavy reliance on genjutsu may have caused her to become somewhat of a ‘one-trick pony’, as she, more than often not, tends to only use those several techniques and repeat the, simply in different order and magnitude. Stats Trivia *Yanagi’s name, 柳, directly translates to ‘willow’. This references the fact that she is found underneath a willow tree. *According to her brother, her real name might have been Tatsuki. **Tatsuki can be broken down into two parts, Tatsu (龍) meaning ‘dragon’, and Ki(喜) meaning ‘joy, happiness’. *It is suspected that Yanagi may have been a part of a clan, descended from the Land of Water. **It is also suspected that Yanagi’s clan might have had a bloodline limit, though it is unknown if it has any ties to her nature release, as Yanagi has not shown to have manifested any form of bloodline limit. **It is also mentioned that Yanagi’s facial features bear resemblance to Land of Water natives. *According to a comment from her encounter with her dead brother, Yanagi’s physique is not common of their clan. **Yanagi’s unnamed clan supposedly share these physical traits: dark greyish-blue hair, yellow eyes, pale skin and an abnormally tall and skinny physique. *According to the Hyō no Sho, while in the Academy, Yanagi had an A in genjutsu, B in ninjutsu, classroom attitude and cooperation, and an F in positivity. *According to the databook(s): **Yanagi’s hobbies are painting and daydreaming. **Yanagi wishes to fight against Yūhi Kurenai. **Yanagi’s favourite foods are kuzumochi and taiyaki, while her least favourite foods are anything too spicy or bitter. **Yanagi prefers either a sweet, not-so-alcoholic umeshu or a strong alcohol such as shōchū **Yanagi’s favourite word is “connection” (繋がり, tsunagari) **Yanagi has completed 98 official missions in total: 28 D-ranks, 36 C-ranks,30 B-ranks, 4 A-ranks, and 0 S-rank. *Yanagi’s nickname, 彫牡丹 Horibotan is given to her by her tattooist master in irezumi **The title can be broken down into two parts; 彫 Hori, which means to engrave or to carve, while 牡丹 botan, means peony. *It is suspected that Yanagi may be infertile. *Yanagi has ‘retired’ from active duty at the age of 30. **This meant she no longer took missions regularly and will no longer take any field missions. **She took two years to study under a master tattooist, Horikuni, before branching out and opening her own tattoo shop specialising in irezumi near the Old City Station. Reference *Character profile pictures are made by 横丁 on picrew.me